Battlefield 6

Battlefield 6’s single-player continues the series’ tradition of not being very good, but the multiplayer is the best it’s been in a long, long time. [Review in Progress]

I think it’s very much worth playing. Like I said, the story is… fine, but that’s not what you’re here for, is it? Go blow some stuff up and let the flames reflect in your sparkling little eyes. It’s glorious to behold. I have to give just one score to the campaign as a whole, so just know with this that I’m thinking the story is maybe a 6, but the mission to mission experience is probably more at a 9. Balancing that out, the campaign gets a middle grounded, 8. I lean toward favoring the strength of the experience over the weakness of the story because it’s doing exactly what it wanted to do, and does so very well. Buy it, try it, blow some stuff up in the Battlefield 6 campaign.

Ultimately, Battlefield 6 is simply a really, really good entry in the series. Not as good as Battlefield 4 , but definitely the best in years. It already makes me want to play match after match and unlock every available weapon and attachment, and I think that feeling will only intensify as the game develops. The somewhat reduced scale and increased emphasis on infantry might seem controversial, but ultimately, it's still incredibly addictive. And who knows, maybe we'll get larger maps focused on tank battles in the future? However, such speculation aside, Battlefield 6 is already a game worth recommending upon release. No other game on the market offers this kind of experience, and here most of the gameplay elements have been meticulously crafted. All that's left is to wait for the servers to fill up with players and then get into the fight.

Battlefield 6’s campaign is too unevenly executed to make its vision as compelling as it ought to be, but it still works well enough to inflect the entire game with a healthy cynicism unusual for the genre. Though every multiplayer military shooter feels at least slightly callous when viewed from a distance, unending war modeled with a twinned desire for both realism and the rendering down of martial violence into sport, Battlefield 6 manages to make a natural home for its design ethos in that discordance. It finds the road to global ruin pretty exciting, and believes that you will, too. For the most part, it’s right.

We’ll save our thoughts on the overall multiplayer experience and progression for our full review, but early thoughts right the same from our previews: Battlefield 6’s multiplayer really is a standout. Hopefully servers hold and that experience carries over to the real thing.